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Obviously a personal anecdote and YMMV, but I have several nieces and nephews, and I've gotten to watch them grow over the last ~15 years. During this time, I'v

Obviously a personal anecdote and YMMV, but I have several nieces and nephews, and I've gotten to watch them grow over the last ~15 years. During this time, I've tried to spend as much time with them as I can. But I'm a new dad as of this year, and it's totally different. It really doesn't compare. There's only so much time you can spend with someone else's kid, even if they're family. Even seeing a niece or nephew every week doesn't compare with waking up with a newborn at 3 AM and seeing them stick their tongue out for the first time, or seeing the squinty face they make when they try a strawberry for the first time at 5 PM on a random Tuesday.

TimTheTinker 2mo ago
It also doesn't compare with the sheer joy of having a little one who joyfully loves the heck out of you because you've bonded with each other and they feel loved and secure with you -- you've cared for them, loved them unconditionally, been understanding, responsive, and emotionally stable with them, and patiently/consistently enforced healthy boundaries on their behavior. In a sense, one could say there's no greater joy. But there's also perhaps no greater pain when parenting gets really complex and hard. One of my kids is autistic and raising him has been incredibly difficult and painful (he's a teen now).